This Week

Back home in Yorkshire the mixed hyacinths we planted in a wooden barrel have grown and opened and are still giving us pleasure.  

We're also back in our usual routine - shopping, seeing our local family who come visiting and generally catching up with admin paperwork and your news via blogger.

This morning I went to the park to take a book back to the library and collect the ones I had reserved.

Two of the books are large print so they'll be easier to read.  

The Agatha Christie book jacket blurb - "An urgent cry for help brings Poirot to France, but he arrives too late to save his client and who now lies in a shallow grave on a golf course. Why is the dead man wearing an overcoat that's too big for him?  Who was the impassioned love-letter in his pocket for?  Before Poirot can answer these questions the case is turned upside down by the discovery of a second, identically murdered corpse".

The Wild Silence by Raynor Winn - "Nature holds the answers for Raynor and her husband Moth.  After walking 630 homeless miles along "The Salt Path" (The first of the non fiction books I read recently) the couple continue living on the windswept and wild English coastline.  The cliffs, the sky and the chalky earth now feel like their home.  Moth has a terminal diagnosis, but he seems revitalized in nature.  Together on the wild coastal path they discover that anything is possible.  Now life beyond the Salt Path awaits and they come back to four walls. The sense of home is illusive and returning to normality is proving difficult until an incredible gesture by someone who reads their story changes everything.  There's a chance to breathe life back into a beautiful farmhouse nestled deep in the Cornish hills:  rewilding the land and returning nature to its hedgerows becomes their saving grace and their new path to follow".  

Bloomsbury Girls by Natalie Jenner - "1950.  Bloomsbury Books on Lamb's Conduit Street has resisted change for a hundred years, run by men and guided by the manager's unbreakable rules.  But after the turmoil of war in Europe the world is changing and the women in the shop have plans.  As the women cross paths with literary figures such as Daphne du Maurier, Samuel Beckett and Peggy Guggenheim, these Bloomsbury girls are working together to plot out a richer and more rewarding future".

Patches of crocuses that have been planted by the park staff come up every year.

Cold, cloudy, but dry best describes the weather at the moment.  We're expecting snow next week and we're not looking forward to it if it happens.

  

As usual I went into the walled garden and it was good to see some colour because of the flowering shrubs and early Spring flowers.

Above, back in our own garden the daffodils remain in bud waiting for some sunshine.  We wait for warmer days although with the threat of snow that's unlikely to happen.  We have to make the most of  dry weather and get out and about when we can.

Thanks for visiting.  Have a good weekend wherever you live.